To become a legend in rock and roll, a performer can either die or wait to be rediscovered. Urge Overkill did both.
But even stranger, like Tupac possibly announcing an intention to fake his own death before becoming legendary, Urge played with the idea of what creates a pop icon and got burned in the process.
For the entire short history of downloading music, the only testimony to the existence of Urge has been its cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon,” recorded for Uma Thurman’s legendary dance in “Pulp Fiction.”
This month, Urge Overkill announced it would be returning to the studio this spring with Brian Quast of the Cherry Valence on drums. In its resurrection, the band’s former indie label, Touch n’ Go, will be re-releasing earlier Urge material.
National Kato, or Nash as his friends call him, is sitting at a Chicago bar complaining that he misses the Silk City diner in Philadelphia. His girlfriend, whom he met in Philadelphia while his band was recording its first major label debut Saturation, is bartending. They’re talking to a patron who was visiting from Philly and recognized Urge’s geko-eyed lead singer from early high school MTV. “They never got us in Chicago, man. They never got us here,” Nash reiterates.
To say Chicago never got Urge Overkill when Saturation came out in 1993 is one of the great understatements of rock revisionism. Chicago’s indie-rock scene hated Urge and everything it stood for — even if everything the band claimed it stood for was tongue-in- cheek.
Urge released Saturation, a slick tribute to ’70s rock, during the apex of grunge. When bands were defying the major label machine, going lo-fi and creating the institution that it is now indie rock, Kato, Ed “King” Roeser and then-drummer Blackie Onasis, in an almost performance art move, deliberately sold out, leaving independent Touch n’ Go records to sign with Geffen.
Urge had recorded several acclaimed albums with notoriously moody super-producer Steve Albini. Like other Albani collaborators and friends, when Urge left for a major, Albini broke all ties with the band, despite Albini himself producing major label artists.
Credibility with “Guyville,” as they called their hometown’s insular local music scene, wasn’t the band’s concern. Pulling from both ’70s soul and classic rock, Saturation was to be a snub on indie-rock snobbery, a reverse Never Mind the Bollocks.
Long before Saturation was released and Urge was on MTV, the band created rock-star personas, strutting around in velvet jackets, wearing large gold UO medallions and reviving a drink that had long disappeared from the social landscape — the martini. Urge may be responsible, more than the revival of the Rat Pack, for bringing back the martini in the 1990s.
Their drinking was famous and their drinking holes, especially Joe Danno’s long-gone Bucket of Suds and the Rainbo, became legendary.
Saturation received a lukewarm reception from the post-punk public, despite an enthusiastic three-and-a-half-star review by Rolling Stone and making the Village Voice’s “Best of” list that year. “Sister Havana,” a Bon Jovi-crossed-with-Bad Company classic rave-up, made it to MTV, but as film producer Robert Evans might say, the kids those days just weren’t ready for that level of irony. The official sales count was 350,000 copies.
Then, like every rock epic, there were the drugs. Urge’s house, the Bank, literally a converted bank near California and North Avenue in Chicago, became a den of iniquity. One story has Liz Phair cashing her check from a major label distribution deal at a currency exchange and buying copious amounts of cocaine for revelers.
Urge never got big enough the first time to sell this story to VH1, but that still doesn’t have the band’s drummer, Blackie, taking a dark turn with hard substances. The beginning of the end was a canceled tour with then-ascendant Guided by Voices.
Jump ahead to 2000. Indie rock has now become an identifiable fashion plate in American high schools. Hip-hop has replaced rock and roll in rebellion and on top-40 radio.
The week before mankind said goodbye to the 20th century, music critics at the nation’s alternative weeklies published lists of the ’90s best albums. Saturation was in the top 10 of several publications, including the influential Philadelphia Weekly, and people are blogging all about it. Unfortunately, people never had the chance to enjoy Urge in its prime.
Urge is now only the duo of Nash and Roser. They’ve recently finished a year of touring the states, including dates with Tenacious D, and on Valentine’s Day will be playing the Viper Room in Los Angeles. Sets now include tracks from both incarnations of the band, Urge Superstar and pre-Saturation, when they could actually be called grunge. In set-list favorites like “(Now That’s) the Barclords,” where the Tijuana Brass meets the Afghan Wigs, both incarnations of the band seem resolved.
Nash’s girlfriend will tell you that she doesn’t have to bartend — they’ve made enough money off of “Pulp Fiction” — she does it to get out of the house. Nash has been putting out solo albums and touring by himself, but as old friends and well-wishers talk to Nash he tells them that it’s not the same as playing with a band.
More than anything, there’s an energy that Urge getting back together is proof he was right the first time around. It’s not about playing with your back to the audience; it’s about the big moment, a clamor for glamour along with songs that carry heartfelt sincerity. With these new ideas in tow, Nash is ready to go back into the studio and make something shamanistic.
At press date, Touch n’ Go could not confirm exact 2005 release dates of Jesus Urge Superstar, Americruser, Supersonic Storybook, and Stull.
